


A small decision, seen from another universe

by naiadwrites



Series: Small Decision Verse [1]
Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Drama, F/M, Romance, human Nikola, pre-season 4, sorry its confusing, what if Helen married Nikola, what if it wasn't 60 years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 13:06:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2429909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naiadwrites/pseuds/naiadwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helen Magnus has another typically odd encounter with an abnormal. When it takes her somewhere completely different, will she want to return?<br/>Alternate realities run amok.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Trouble in Transport

**Author's Note:**

> This is an older fic that I recently finally finished. Written before Season 4, even before Season 3 finale, without knowing Helen would jump back in time. In the beginning, Nikola is still human.

Helen Magnus was thoroughly tired of miscreants taking potshots at her team while her team was trying to unload a shipment of abnormals. This was the third time this year, and it was getting more than bothersome. She crouched behind a stack of crates, popping up at random intervals in order to fire back at their abusers.

"Why did I agree to come to this particularly soiree? It certainly wasn't for the quality of the entertainment." Nikola muttered at her from where he knelt at her side, his focus on their opponents and keeping his bulletproof magnetic shield in place. He was, of course, pressed against her too closely for comfort or mere convenience. With exquisite timing, he lowers and raises the shield to allow herself and Kate to fire into the next of black garbed lackeys who had yet to give up their attack.

Helen tried to ignore the flush of unwelcome arousal that accompanied having Nikola pressed against her hip, and took a moment to take stock of the crates around them and what could have possible motivated this assault. There were very few truly dangerous abnormals in this shipment from Alberta, although there was one or two curiosities that had not yet been fully documented. One of those was a multimet, curled in a ball of grey fur just a few feet away, obviously understanding that they were in danger and more apt to hide than to run. As a particularly aggressive volley of bullets swept over Nikola's shield, one of the crates burst into splinters and Nikola swore in pain as a bullet ricochet them clipped him in the shoulder.

Terror flooded Helen over the thought that Nikola was no longer bulletproof, but the injury wasn't life threatening, given the volume and artistry of his Serbian oaths. He stretched a hand behind him and they were completely engulfed in his shield. Sweat broke out on his brow and Helen had no idea how much longer he could keep this up.

"Henry! How much longer until you can get this thing moving?" Helen yelled out, knowing that they needed to get out of here as quickly as possible.

The vehicle moved a few inches, the high pitched scraping of metal on concrete a testament to the fact their tires were useless. But that seemed to be the final straw for the little abnormal next to her. It uncurled and stared at her with huge amber eyes set in a rather mismatched, unremarkable rodent face. Then, it jumped straight at her, and for all her hundred and fifty seven years on the planet, she let out a rather ridiculous scream. She didn't even feel the creature land on her stomach before a rich amber light flooded her consciousness and she blacked out completely.

80808080808080808

She felt a hand shake her shoulder and her eyes popped open. She was slumped over a polished wood table, her head cradled in her folded arms. "Mama? Are you all right?"

She blinked and raised her head, wondering what kind of dream she'd found herself in. Some sweet memory of Ashley? But it had to be a dream, for she'd been in a hail of bullets a moment previously and had been pounced on by…

The multimet chewed on a large leaf of spinach, his wide amber eyes taking in her presence with none of the panic she'd witnessed just a few moments ago. The tiny furred creature was its serene self, making no effort to escape the small Plexiglas cage in which it sat before her.

"Mama, you never faint unless…don't tell me you are expecting again? Sophie isn't even twenty, and she'll be terribly disappointed if you and Papa aren't able to come to her graduation. Especially as Papa is finally deigning to give the commencement address at an American school. MIT would throw a fit if you two aren't there to open the new facility."

She turned her head, quite impressed with the speed at which the woman next to her could speak. A woman who was most certainly not her daughter Ashley. Appearing to be in her thirties, the stunning woman with a long oval face and a short reddish blonde pageboy was dressed in a crisply tailored white lab coat and a green pencil skirt. She looked strangely familiar, for all that she was obviously insane.

"Papa still hates airplanes, and won't let you on one when you are pregnant. Then he won't go anywhere if you won't, and…"

"There's always the train, dear." Best to humor someone with questionable sanity, it has always helped before.

"Mama, unless you plan on a private railcar, you and Papa would be mobbed. Security would never allow it." She crossed her arms and displayed fine, long boned hands with immaculate bare nails. Another spark of familiarity traveled through her, but Helen had to keep her wits about her. The last time something like this had happened to her, she'd been sent into a horrifying future of a zombie apocalypse. But this was clearly a Sanctuary facility, in fact, if it wasn't for the rich wood paneling and the odd looking but high powered light fixtures illuminating the large room, should would have sworn it was the main lab in her own Sanctuary in Old City.

Helen had to keep her wits about her, and simply learn what she could before panicking. "I assure you…dear, that I am not pregnant, and have no intention to be in the near future." The flash of pain filled her heart, with Ashley's death once again freezing her heart to ice.

The woman claiming to be her daughter laughed. "You and Papa say that, but I often wonder. Each interval seems to be getting shorter. Fifty years between Dmitri and I, then forty five between Dmitri and Sophia. I presume the next interval would be approximately the same, but at the rate you two go on, I'm surprised I only have two siblings and not twenty!"

Three children! Helen's heart pounded briefly with the thought of a real family, with a husband and multiple children, something she'd thought her long life and her many mistakes would have inevitably denied her. She was obviously dreaming.

She kept looking at the woman, her daughter, and wondered why she looked so different from Ashley. Build on a more elegant scale, shorter, with light blue eyes and a wide, teasing smile. It was hard to believe that she and John could have….

Oh. Her eyes opened wide at the realization. She looked at the light fixtures, the unfamiliar technology surrounding her, and what appeared to be an original Da Vinci sketch on one of the walls. Not John.

Nikola. This woman was her daughter with Nikola Tesla.

"Mama?" The woman crouched at her side, bending toward her and taking her chin in her hand, looking into her eyes with the confident examining glance of a professional. "You looked a bit flushed, but your pupils are equal. And your pulse is elevated but nothing out of normal."

How could she tell? She'd not felt for her pulse, which was rather doing a quickstep at the thought of being married to Nikola Tesla, apparently for more than a century. She did the math in her head, and realized that the woman looking at her with love and concern was at least a hundred and fifteen, and as ageless as she and Nikola had been.

"I'm fine, dear. Where is your father? I need to speak with him about some things."

"That's it. Something is most definitely wrong. How long did you lose consciousness, Mother? You know Papa is in Tokyo installing the new EM shield over the city. He's due back in a few hours, true, but you always meet him at the airport unless there's an emergency."

Definitely Nikola then. But John was still someone to be wary of, if EM shields were still the order of the day.

"Maybe I have been working too hard and need a bit of a lie in. Let me rest, and greet your father, and then I promise, you can run any tests you think you need to. Let me just get this little one back into the SHU and…"

"Marko? You know Marko won't stay in the SHU, Mother. Not if you want him to stay here and not dart away to some other universe until we make it clear he's welcome to return. I know he fascinates you, Mother, but you really shouldn't take him out of the garden to study him. You might end up in some strange alternate reality with no way back! I know being the famous Dr. Helen Magnus-Tesla is a bit of a strain from time to time, but I don't think you'd want to take your chances with another world."

Her mother pursed in shock as she realized what exactly must have happened to her. "Marko" had hopped on to her after his crate was crush when some black suited goons had ambushed a delivery of abnormals that morning. She'd been stuck with Nikola, Kate and Henry, trying to get the van restarted and fending off a rather determined assault. Was the Cabal back, or…she had to get back, no matter how curious this world made her.

"All right, I'll let you return Marko to his garden home, and I shall simply rest. I didn't sleep well last night. I usually don't without your father."

Her daughter rolled her eyes and smiled, "I hope that in a hundred years I still am as close to Henry as you are to Papa. Especially as it took me so much longer to find a man who would put up with my eccentricities!"

"Anya, I will gladly put up with your eccentricities for at least another five centuries, as long as you let me at my PlayStation now and again." Henry strode into the lab, still wearing a T-shirt and jeans as he did in her own world, but with a subtle confidence and happiness writ upon his features. He calmly pulled his wife, Anya, into a quick kiss and smiled at Helen, "What's up, Doc?"

So familiar, and yet, so unsettlingly different. "I'm sorry, Henry, I believe I am a bit weary. I didn't sleep well, and Anya," her heart thudded to finally learn the name of this stranger who was her own child," has ordered me to rest."

"I wish Anya would listen to me and take a load off." He reached down and patted Anya's belly softly. "She's out like a light by 8 o'clock these days, making your grandchildren is tough work."

Helen blinked and her eyes fluttered down to where a slight bump was concealed by Anya's lab coat.

"Really Henry, Dmitri and Ling-mai have five children. It will take us a while to catch up, even with twins now. And Sharon is due before me! These two will have a grand-nephew older than they are."

"In this family, age is a very relative matter, sweetie."

Helen sucked in a deep breath, her heart aching with all the information slapping her in the face. "I'm afraid I really am exhausted. Can you call a car for the airport for me when Nikola's flight is expected."

"Already done, boss. Big Guy will take you in the van. Less publicity that way, since it's not a diplomatic jaunt this time."

Bigfoot could drive a van, and there would be no publicity. Diplomatic jaunt? And Nikola giving the commencement address at MIT…what was going on?


	2. Different worlds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just where has Helen found herself?

She walked as calmly as she could through the halls of this Old City Sanctuary, happy that she had a few moments to process what had happened without worrying about an escort. She hoped that her bedroom was the same suite, and sighed with relief when she opened the unlocked door and saw the vanity table she'd owned since she was fifteen years old. Few things about the room were the same though. It was certainly not the more utilitarian luxury of the bedroom she remembered, but a plush oasis of silk and velvet, in deeper colors that she would have chosen, but ones that certainly appealed to her. They were simply bolder than her usual taste.

She sat gingerly on the bed, its lush comfort as soft as her own. Out of curiosity, she opened the drawer on the Chippendale end table, wondering if this version of her still had a 9 mm and a copy of Yeats in her drawer.

There was some kind of weapon, but not her trusty gun. Something much more ergonomic with sleek silver lines. And there was a copy of Yeats, yes. And there was also set of heavy duty plastic handcuffs and a scrap of dark cloth that would make a fine blindfold.

She shut the drawer, a blush upon her cheeks as she instantly imagined Nikola spread out upon the sumptuous sheets, cuffed to one of the immensely sturdy bedposts, wearing the blindfold and a smirk.

She lay back upon her bed and looked up at the ceiling, seeing - herself. She giggled softly. Nikola would have a mirror over the bed, vain thing that he is. She did not look very different in this strange world. Her hair was still her current long dark brown waves. She wore a lab coat and black Merino trousers. The deep ruby silk was a color she would have been attracted to, but would never have purchased. Too flippant, too irreverent. Her face appeared strangely younger, and if she wondered if she had somehow stumbled into an alternate past, not an alternate present or future. Her mind drifted, wondering how Nikola would look, how different he would be in a world where she'd chosen him over John.

Their story was a curse of almost, never quite. She'd wondered at Oxford what his feelings for her might have been, and there were so many times that she'd looked into his eyes and seen something so hungry there. But he'd never acted upon it, treating her with the utmost respect, never talking down to her or waiting for her to catch up to the pace of his brilliant mind. She'd thought perhaps such things didn't matter to him, that love and sex and desire were foreign to him, and that he lived a true life of the mind, a philosopher king in Plato's sense.

One night, long before the Source blood had changed them all, the two of them had been working late, Nikola having insisted that he could improve upon Bell's telephone by making it wireless. She'd been humoring his arrogant claims, as she usually did, when he'd sent her to her room and told her to get some sleep, but to not let her receiver out of her sight. She'd been half undressed, in her petticoat and stays, when she'd been startled by the ringing of the huge handset she'd dragged upstairs on Nikola's insistence. She'd answered, her fingers shaking slightly, "Yes?"

"Tell me, sweet Helen, did I disturb your dreams of me?"

She shrieked, and ran out of the room, still carrying the handset, down the servants' stairs and all the way to the laboratory setup in her home's basement. She set down the handset and thrown her arms around him, and hugged him. "Nikola, you are a marvel, for all your bluster." She kissed him on the cheek, and he'd looked at her, uncharacteristically speechless, his eyes running down her barely dressed frame held in his arms.

He'd swallowed heavily, his eyes snapping back to her face, and he'd smirked, "I suppose I deserve such a tantalizing reward, given your earlier doubt of me.

She'd realized her state of dishabille, and she should have immediately run. But she'd paused briefly, staring at Nikola's lips, so very close to hers. She could have kissed him then. She could have let her boundless admiration for him overflow its banks to become something more. But she was terrified that he would change, that he would treat her differently, that their strange friendship would be lost if she dared to indulge in something more.

She'd been thirty, a settled old maid. It was not for her to think of romance and love and such missish things. So she'd stepped back, grabbed the Seville Row jacket that Nikola could barely afford, and covered herself. "You've won, Nikola. I can never deny your genius again. But please, let me sleep in peace! And go home to sleep yourself, you've won the day."

She still remembered his grey-blue eyes looking at her with a hint of sadness and something eyes she hadn't been able to identify. Now, she suspected it had been longing. "Then sleep, sweet Helen, for tomorrow we conquer a new project. Perhaps yours will be the face to launch a thousand airships!"

She'd laughed and leaned in to give him a peck on the check, followed by his sharp take of breath. She'd turned and fled, butterflies in her stomach. She'd fallen asleep that night wondering if perhaps romance was not so unattainable a goal. Perhaps that's why the next day, when she'd been introduced Montague John Druitt by James Watson, she'd thought his smile was utterly charming.

What would have happened if she'd kissed Nikola Tesla that night? What would his lips feel like under hers, when it wasn't a stolen peck, but a shared worship?

Before she'd quite realized it, Helen fell asleep, the electric scent of Nikola Tesla still on the pillows of her bed.

808080808

The pointless firefight continued around them, and Nikola gritted his teeth in annoyance at the strain all this put upon his sorry mortal frame. Nikola Tesla breaking a sweat - sickening. Not to mention the blood staining his silk shirt from the flesh wound in his shoulder. But there was no time to devote to a round of deserved self-pity, for when another one of Helen's little pets jumped straight at her, Nikola was the only one to see her body erupt in a strange amber glow, the little furry thing disappear, and Helen slump unconscious. Dammit, they had to get out of here.

"Wolf boy! I can't see out the front window of this unsightly box, so when I start going, you tell me what direction to turn. Got that, pea brain?"

Without waiting for an answer, Nikola pulled his shield as tight as he could around the fleshy members of their little band and began to push his new-found abilities as hard as he could. He smiled when he felt the corrugated steel floor under his knees lift slightly, and then pushed harder, until the truck was a full two feet higher than it had been on the shot-out tires. It was not necessarily easy, and his blood hummed with the magnetic currents flowing through him to repel that much weight off the ground. But he had no intention of sitting like a target in an shooting arcade and waiting for the assorted minions surrounding them to get another lucky shot.

He let out a growl as he pushed around the iron re-bar under the roadbed, propelling the truck and all its occupants forward, minus the back wall of the box truck that had been torn off in the initial attack.

"What the hell?" the bounty hunter yelled, staring at him with wide eyes and pointing her gun at him.

"Cease, little girl. I'm helping, not hurting. Just make sure if my shield fails that I don't get shot at, got it?"

Not at all up to his usual wit, but he really was under a bit of strain.

"I don't know what the hell you are doing, Tesla, but in about fifty feet you better turn right or we're going to smash into a wall!"

"Thank you, hairball. Can you get us some backup now?"

"Look dude, you fried all the electronics with that bullet shield. I'm stuck with a flare gun and a prayer as our only options."

Thinking quickly, he pushed harder, faster, and turned the truck in the direction Henry had indicated. The men in black behind them were now running to catch up, given the sound of boots on pavement, and there was no way that he could get the truck to move much faster, not without a serious power boost or a source of…

"Train tracks! There's got to be tracks around here somewhere. Look around and find them, now!"

A bullet passed through the shield, slowly down slightly but still making it far enough through to ping against the ceiling with an alarming ring.

There was the crinkle of paper maps from the front seat. Kate was standing next to him, hopping from foot to foot as she searched for a target. "I don't suppose you could drop the shield again, let me take a couple of…"

"I'm taxed enough as it is, child. Shut up and look pretty."

"We're in luck, dude! A block up ahead, turn left and a quick right, and there are old industrial tracks."

Tesla pushed, turned, turned again and wished that modern construction in New City used more metal and less plywood.

He felt the presence of the rails under them with a relief, and with one more push against their reassuring iron solidity, he sent the truck barreling down on its axles as fast as possible, leaving their pursuers in the proverbial dust.

Now, what the hell was wrong with Helen?

It was another hour, after they'd gotten to a payphone and had the big hairy butler pick them up in yet another dreaded truck. Really, no flair in her vehicle choices, his lovely Helen. He'd stalked after Bigfoot as he'd carried Helen into the infirmary and the little lovesick protégé had hovered nervously over Helen. He'd refused to leave, placing himself firmly in a chair nearest Helen and having a bit of fun making little William nervous by staring at his every move. Helen appeared to be in no distress, other than her unconscious state, but Nikola had nothing better to do than watch over her and contemplate who might be after them this time, now that the Cabal had supposedly been taken out of the picture.

When Will finally noticed the blood dripping from his elbow, he let the man rip off his sleeve – alas, another expensive shirt lost to Helen, and not in an entertaining fashion – and put in a few stitches where the bullet had burned a line across his bicep.

"Watch it there, butterfingers. I scar now."

"You don't scar, Nikola. Not even when I try my best." He spun his head and looked at Helen, who was slowly sitting up on the bed. She had a smile on her face that actually reached her eyes, and Nikola was speechless at the difference it made. Gods, she was beautiful.

"Well, you haven't tried to shoot me lately, Helen. But that doesn't mean others can't do the job for you. I am mortal now, and you're the last to let me forget it."

"Mortal? Nikola?" her eyes flickered around the room, concern filling her every movement. "Where are we, Nikola? It looks like home, but these machine are ancient. They have wires! I can't believe you would let wires in your Sanctuary." She laughed softly, but slightly hysterically, and Nikola stood up, moving toward her and standing in front of her.

"What's the last thing you remember, Helen?"

She looked at him, her eyes analyzing his appearance and she was not pleased with what she saw. She tried to hide it, but he could tell when Helen Magnus was on the edge of panic. "I was prepping a case to try to lure Marko back. His favorite spinach and Spanish almonds, something that always lures him back to our reality. I know, you hate that I play with him, but…"

"Helen, who is Marko?"

She reached out suddenly, pulling him into her arms and burying her head in his neck. She pressed a kiss there, and he sucked in a breath at the sensation of being in her arms at her own will. She whispered against his skin, so softly that his mortal ears could barely hear her. "You aren't my Nikola, are you?"


	3. An imperfect world

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even in a world in which Helen chose the better man, all is far from perfect

Helen awoke to a soft knock on her door, and she sighed in relief, thinking that it had all been a strange dream and that she would mull over its meaning at another time. Jung was a very interesting fellow, but she didn't really want to believe his suppositions that dreams were a window into the deeper consciousness of not only oneself, but the universal truth. If so, would her life really had been so much different, so much more complete, if she had once kissed Nikola Tesla?

Then she realized she was looking at herself, in a mirror over the bed. And her bed, in her reality, had no mirror.

"Helen, guh guh, it's time to head to the airport. I'll be waiting in the garage, guh guh."

She pushed herself off the bed and ran to the door, pulling it open to look at hopefully a familiar face.

Bigfoot stood in the hallway, turned to face her with a questioning look in his eye. She took in his visage and did her best not to flinch. Those bright beautiful eyes of his were so different. The right side of his face was covered with a thick burn scar, and his right eye was gone completely, the left infinitely paler. She could have fixed some of the damage, but she knew Bigfoot would on principal not allow any of her human medicine to alter his looks. He was who he was.

"I'm sorry to startle you, Helen, guh guh. Anya said that you had been feeling poorly. Perhaps just this once, you could stay home safe and let…"

"No, I'll meet Nikola at the airport. As…usual. I'll follow you down in just a moment."

She suddenly wished she had time to change, to comb her hair. She shucked off the wrinkled lab coat at the very least, and put her pumps back on. She ran her fingers through her hair, and then she wondered why on earth she cared so much what she looked like. In her own reality, Nikola Tesla was a thorn in her side who'd seen her at the best and at her worst, and was either declaring his love or his intent to take over the world. Here, she'd been married to the man for more than a century. He probably would not care that there was a run in her stocking behind her knee and that she was a bit sweaty from nervousness.

Standing up straight, she walked out of the den of iniquity she'd managed to fall asleep in and down the halls, determined to talk to Nikola and find out what the hell had happened to her.

0808080808

"So, you believe that you've traveled here from an alternate dimension. Switched places with 'our' Helen Magnus." Nikola tried to keep his voice level and not to notice how Helen was stroking his arm. He had to try to understand what had happened to her.

"It's not conjecture. I'm certain that Marko must have been in contact with your reality's version of Helen Magnus. She was transported to my own reality, and given the laws of physics that the multimet species can somehow alter for its own body, conservation of matter demanded that I was sent here. It's really a most remarkable effect. I had theorized that it was impossible for two versions of the same individual to coexist in the same reality, and to see that it is in fact….It's so odd to feel you so warm, not without…" she blushed suddenly, and Nikola really wanted to know exactly what thought would have completed that sentence and brought such a beautiful pink to her cheeks.

"Oh, the flirting. It's so much worse. You are either telling the truth Magnus, or you are in fact extremely ill."

She looked at Dr. Expendible finally, and Nikola punched down his jealousy and deep desire for them to be thoroughly alone for this conversation. She pursed her lips in that particularly way she did when she was searching her vast memories for a particular piece of information. "Dr. William Zimmerman, yes? You work in the London Sanctuary with James, since Declan was sent to Jakarta last year."

The protégé blinked, a touch of heartbreak on his face that he wasn't quick enough to hide. "No….Yes…I mean, I am Dr. William Zimmerman, but I work here in Old City. With you. I'm…I'm your…"

"He's your protégé, my dear. Already half in love with you, I fear. They always did manage to do that."

She smiled softly. "I'm sorry, Dr. Zimmerman, but we've only met a few times in my world. Although James has nothing but kind words for you. Perhaps I could contact…I'm sure he could think of…"

Nikola grabbed her hand in his, feeling in the fast beat of her pulse how nervous she really was, "I'm sorry, my dear, but here, James Watson died nobly, retrieving the Source blood from Bhalassam."

"What! Why on earth would he take such a chance! And Ripper, he would never…he tried, many times, to teleport into the place. He killed countless of his clones having them flash directly into solid rock. I thank God that my father managed to hide the blood so well that the Cabal haven't gotten their hands on it!"

Nikola and Will both sighed deeply, but it was Will who spoke to the teary-eyed Magnus. "Unfortunately, there was a virus that required…"

"Not another bloody virus. Damn biological weapons."

"Look, I'm going to go. I'm read up on that little creature, what did you call it, Marko?"

"He's a multimet. Very unique, can expand their consciousness to monitor dozens, maybe hundreds of possible realities that exist within the multiverse."

Will stared at her with wide eyes. "Yeah, let me get on that." He turned and fled, leaving Nikola blissfully alone with Helen. There was a long, surprisingly comfortable silence. Unfortunately, Nikola never could abide silence for too long.

"It's nice to know that in some universe that you've come around to my viewpoint of the unpleasantness of biological study. Especially now that I'm the unfortunately victim of biology's vagaries."

"Ah, your ego has recently taken a blow, I can tell. I could almost miss you as a mortal, if I wasn't so used to you as a vampire."

"I'm not used to being mortal yet, myself. And I certainly plan on altering that and then continuing on with my plans for world domination as soon as possible."

She tilted her head and stared at him, biting her lip. "You're the same, and yet, not the same. I'm afraid that I cannot really tell if you are joking or telling me the absolute, unvarnished true." She smiled, a touch of sadness in her eyes. "My Nikola faced such a problem once. Nineteen sixty three, right after the Dallas Kennedy massacre. Some lab in the US government unleashed a virus that was supposed to kill all abnormals. You…my Nikola, and our team figured out a method to neutralize it, but in doing so, he was exposed to far too much of it. It drained him to the point of death, to the point where I had to neutralize the source blood in his veins or risk losing you…him."

She closed her eyes, and Nikola drank in her expressions more than her words. A Helen Magnus that cared about him, loved him, openly…never hiding her expressions behind a century-old mask of immutable ice. No, a Helen Tesla! He relished the sound of the syllables in his mind. "And I suppose that you found some way to remedy that, or you'd be even more affected by my presence, young and virile, even if mortal."

She laughed and kissed his cheek, and he swallowed audibly, trying to resist the urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her, the closest thing he would ever have to his Helen. "I'm afraid that it took a fair bit of time, but the answer was really remarkably similar. Though the Source blood had long been buried in Bhalassam, where it shall ever remain as far as I am concerned," her eyes flickered between Will and himself with fierce determination, " between Anya and Dmitri and my own blood, we managed to cobble together a serum which reactivated your innate genes rather well. My own blood alone would stop your aging, at the very least. At least, I suspect it would. After what it did to…"

She looked at her lap, where her hands were suddenly clenched into tight fists, her expression that fierce anger that Helen wore so magnificently. "To John?"

"Don't call him John. John Druitt hasn't existed for a hundred and twenty years! Jack the Ripper..." she spat the name like the vilest of curses, and Nikola couldn't help relishing the sound. "I don't wish to talk about him. I can only hope in this world he and his madness is dead." She growled low, and Nikola swore he saw her eyes swirl with silver black and her teeth elongate for a moment before she ran a hand over her face. Was this Helen part vampire? He was so aroused he could barely think, much less speak, but he did manage to push out one quip.

"His madness is taking a brief holiday, but I'm afraid he's very much alive."

"Jack without his demons? Ha…that's perhaps is even more frightening than the entirely of the Cabal and the Rippers combined. What manipulations could the man make if he wasn't driven by madness."

"So, there was a Cabal in your reality as well. And Ashley? Was she…"

Helen looked at him, "Who is Ashley?"

"Oh…of course. You never had a daughter. Here you had…"

" We…I have two daughters and a son. I thought you said that you and I were not...had not…."

Nikola beat his fist against his clenched thigh. One after another, all his dreams laid before him, all untouchable in another reality. Helen, his wife and somehow part vampire as he was. Three children with her. A life with the woman he loved, a century of reality rather than lonely dreams. Pain slashed though him like Ripper's fist once had.

"It was not your daughter with me, alas. But with…let's say, another." She obviously hated Druitt, so he did not wish to burden her with the idea that she would have had a child with him.

"Dare I ask with whom?"

Will crashed into the room, for once with perfect timing. "Magnus, I talked to Henry, who did a quick search. And there's nothing. Marko was absolutely new on our radar, and there are no other multimets known or rumored to exist."

She bit her lip. "Marko was very unique. I doubt there are many of his kind in any single reality at a given time. One wonders how they ever manage to find each other to breed."

Nikola chuckled, "The drive to procreation is immense, reaching across time and space in a way that not even I understand."

Helen looked at him and then at Will. "Dr Zimmerman, where is my daughter in this world? Nikola tells me that…"

Will's face paled, and Nikola coughed, damning himself for ever revealing Ashley's existence. But he took the burden on himself to explain, "Ashley died, a little over a year ago. The Cabal…"

"The damned cursed Cabal. Will Jack never leave us alone!"

"I'm afraid the Cabal here was just a band of very devious humans intent on controlling abnormals and ruling the world. Druitt…Ripper was as against them as we are. In fact, he helped to destroy them after Ashley's death."

A weary confusion passed over her face. Nikola tightened his hold on her hand, which he'd never forget he had been allowed to hold within his grasp.

"I do not understand why The Ripper would help us in any way, shape or form."

Nikola whispered, not able to speak fully the words to hurt this lovely, hopeful Helen. "Because Ashley was John Druitt's child with you."

8080808080808080808

The ride to the airport was a journey into some futureland, not merely different from her troublesome present but radically so.

Firstly, the car that Bigfoot drove was hovering a good two feet off the ground, and there were no wheels or any means of propulsion that she could discern. When she climbed inside the roomy interior of what could only be described as a limousine crossed with a van and mated to a cartoon future car. The dome top of the vehicle was opaque, and once inside she could see out into the garage with no difficulty, but she'd not been able to see the interior until she was inside. The plush butter-colored leather and walnut paneling seemed very much in Nikola's taste, but she also found it very pleasing. She laughed softly when she saw the cuts in one of the seats clearly made by claws. And she wondered what had inspired that, anger or passion.

A humming buzz crackled over the formerly silent vehicle, and Helen recognized the distinctive sound of an EM shield. As the garage door opened out on the street, the car glided out with silent grace, the only sound a strange popping when the two EM shields merged and then the car escaped, like a daughter cell leaving her mother. She turned to watch the garage close, almost surprised that she couldn't see the EM shield in place, guarding her home. When she turned around to look at the city she'd called home for decades, she found she'd achieved a new vantage point, as the car calmly lifted off of the roadbed to hover forty feet in the air, and slid into layers of traffic that soared in and around and through a cityscape that was so very different.

No power lines. But windmills. No smokestacks or smog, but the distinctive pulsing crackle of electricity as vehicles passed through checkpoints and entered and exited different regions.

"Shields. Thousands of EM shields. What the hell has happened to this world?"

Bigfoot called back to her over a speaker, "Helen? Is there a problem? Readings indicate the shield is a full strength. Shouldn't be concern with arriving safely and retrieving Tesla, guh guh."

Her mind spun in circles, trying to find an answer to where she was and how to get back home. And she was still fussing with her hair, bloody hell. Nikola could take her with her bedraggled hair and crumpled clothes or not. Knowing his constant flow of innuendo, he'd just as well she wore nothing at all.


	4. Rippers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen is jeopardy friendly, and Ashley misses pizza.

A private plane? And a private hanger? This was all very much to Nikola's tastes. Still, it made Helen wonder, in this reality where electricity crackled through the air rather than smog, just how much power did Tesla wield in this world?

Biggie let her out of the car after an astonishingly short trip to New City airport, which was radically different than the hour long trek of bumper to bumper hell she used to finish paperwork in her own world. Not to mention the "airport" itself, which was a completely different building, shaped to allow for the most efficient use of the EM shield which surrounded its star shaped structure like a hand in a glove. Planes were different, squatter, wider, with engines she couldn't hope to recognize the speed or power of.

But they had bypassed the larger terminal and headed for a smaller one, with heavier rather than lighter levels of unobtrusive, but very present, security. She stepped out of the car into fresh air, shaded under a canopy that looked like a saffron orange silk, but which once again hummed with electricity. She wondered whether it was protection from the sun, some unknown enemy, or was in fact generating electricity from the sun shining high above in the cloudless sky. A silver plane with red and black accents that turned the mere machine into a beautiful bird taxied smoothly down the runway and Helen tapped her toe with impatience. At least fashion hadn't betrayed her – she still had comfortable black heels that made a satisfying click on the marble-smooth concrete on which she stood.

"Helen, it will still be a few minutes while there are final security checks. I think you would be more comfortable in the car."

She looked at him with polite dismissiveness. She was far too worked up to sit calmly in the car, not when she had nothing to do except wonder if she'd truly gone insane. She would have tried to do this Helen's paperwork, surely, bureaucracy was eternal and unchanging, if she'd thought to bring it in paper form. She'd had hopes of learning something of this world, but without a means to access information, she was flying blind. The super thin tablet screen in the car had retinal scanning, and it appeared that it didn't like her eyes. "99% match insufficient."

Where the hell was she? Who was she?

Stairs were rolled up to the side of the plane that had stopped just a few hundred feet away, its eerily silent engine stirring up a wind that whipped up her hair. An iris opened in the side of the plane and Nikola stepped out, his eyes sweeping over the tarmac with the same dynamic intensity that she remembered from her own world.

Those eyes found hers, and his face lit up. She'd so rarely seen him smile rather than smirk – his face was completely altered. She knew then that this Nikola really did love her, completely and utterly. And her own heart was filled with a wild joy at the knowledge. She was moving before she had quite realized it, and running at full speed toward Nikola when she passed out from the protective cover of the orange canopy. Nikola shouted something at her but the hiss of teleportation was a familiar warning. Three men and a woman blazed into existence just in front of her, and she automatically reached for a gun that wasn't there, that didn't even exist anymore. Black eyes and long nails, and that unemotional violence contained within four faces – Helen felt fear and anger swirled within her with raw hatred. She backed away, trying to return to the canopy, but they were on her, grabbing at her as she dodged and flailed. She knew that whoever these people were, they meant her evil, and as soon as they made contact she would be taken away to someone impossibly inaccessible and kept or killed.

There was a flash from behind her, and one of the superabnormals collapsed to the ground, and the before the others could react with vehemence, Nikola was there, eyes black and claws extended, a swirling ball of electricity held in front of them both. He was enough of a distraction that she was under the canopy, safe from teleportation at least, if not the threat of dismemberment. He fought viciously, beautifully, almost toying with all three of them. He was so much stronger than she remembered. Another flash from her right, and another enemy went down. She turned her head and saw Bigfoot holding a small weapon that had to be a version of Nikola's power-disrupting weapon that he'd invented in her own world. But Bigfoot was wielding a human weapon? Against all of his beliefs? How bad was this world, that he would…

A series of hisses, and the two remaining abnormals disappeared, leaving the bodies of their brethren and a still vampiric Nikola looking at her with anger. He stalked toward her, "What the hell were you thinking Helen! The Rippers are always looking, always! No matter how many of their satellites we shoot down, we can never…." By this time, his eyes had gone back to their normal blue, his claws retracted, and Helen had to repress the urge to throw herself into his arms and weep. But Nikola would not let her withdraw. He pulled her into his arms, holding her with every bit of the supernatural strength in his arms. His lips pressed against her neck and she shivered, desire warring with adrenaline and mental exhaustion.

"That's the problem, Nikola. I'm afraid that I didn't understand the danger. I've never heard of the Rippers. I don't belong here."

He pulled back, his eyes running over her face. "Oh, your love of Marko has finally come back to bite you, hasn't it?"

"The multimet jumped on me in the middle of a firefight, but apparently my avatar here seems to have a fondness for the fellow."

"You're fortunate that the Rippers are suffering difficulties at the moment. We've just managed to clear out a lab in Nigeria and they are still recovering. I can devote all my considerable brainpower to getting you back to your version of Nikola. I'm sure he's worried."

She pursed her lips, wondering what the hell "her" Nikola would think of all this. "So, you believe that I have exchanged places with this realities version of Helen Magnus?"

"Helen Tesla. Though there were a few decades in the twentieth century you went back to your maiden name for a time. Solidarity with the women's movement. As long as you share my bed at night, I'm content."

She blushed, hard, and Nikola's brow raised. This was beyond their accustomed flirting. This Nikola knew her, body and soul. He'd known her body for a century. His sexual innuendos were backed up by action, and Helen could not help but be very very curious.

But Nikola frowned. "You are blushing. Although I enjoy making you blush, it takes considerably more effort to achieve that effect in my Helen. You aren't mine in your reality, are you?"

A not insignficiant part of her wanted to disagree. Whispered that she belonged more to Nikola Tesla than she was comfortable admitting. But it was all in her mind, and so she answered truthfully.

"I've never been married in my world."

"I must have been a veritable ass and a fool not to capture your heart. With the way you look at me, you are not immune to my charms." She finally noticed that he was still holding her arms loosely.

"You definitely have your moments, Tesla."

"Helen, Nikola. I suggest we let a team take the bodies and return to the safety of the Sanctuary, guh guh."

She pulled away from Nikola, and looked at Bigfoot holding a gun, a sight she could barely comprehend. She might have Nikola in his world, and children, but something was still very wrong with this world.

(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*)

Helen was muttering vicious under her breath, practically shivering in revulsion after the revelation that she'd had a child with John Druitt. She eyes were flashing in anger, a beautiful flush was on her face. She was just as beautiful as his own Helen Magnus. Nikola tried not to revel in his uncontested ownership of this Helen's heart, but he was not nearly that disciplined. In a word, he was practically giddy. Helen had turned to him for comfort, as though it was the most natural action in the world, and he would enjoy it while he could. His own Helen was far too independent to ever ask for comfort. He was certain that between this Helen's confidence and his own brilliance, they would repair this minor rift in realities before any excessive damage resulted.

Nikola noticed the blonde in the doorway a half a second before anyone else in the room. But even his vast intelligence could not prompt him to process the ramifications of the sight, other than to stand up and place his body in front of Helen.

This action alerted an uncomfortable Will, who turned and gaped at the intruder. "Ashley?" Will screeched, backing away from the figure in the door slowly, as though from a wild animal.

"Ah, hi guys." Ashley brought her hand up in a small wave, her face in a tight smile. "Long time no see, I suppose."

"Doc! There was a weird flicker in the alarms on the…" Henry spun the corner 'round the doorframe and in locking eyes on Ashley, he raised the superabnormal weapon in his shaking hand. "What the hell is going on!"

"That's what I'd like to know as well." Nikola spoke crisply. "Given that Ashley Magnus has been dead for close to a year in this reality, and was under Cabal control before that. Oh, and nice work bringing that weapon, Tiny Tim. I shall upgrade you to henchman from idiot."

"Gee, thanks Magneto. Just what I always wanted."

Ashley sighed, her hands up and her eyes sad. "Look, Da…Mama." She swallowed thickly. "Henry…I know this is going to sound weird as hell, but…"

Helen piped in now, her teeth clenched. "You are a Ripper. I know you. These people may think you are my daughter brought back from the dead, but you are Cabal. You broke into my lab and took Marko close to a month ago, and now I find you here. I do not think that is some benign coincidence."

Ashley stared at Helen for a moment, then nodded her head, again with that flicker of sorrow that Nikola could not help but react to, it was so similar to her mother. "There's the same hole in the EM shield down in the sewer in this dimension as in yours, ok. I didn't have to teleport far. Look, Mama, Doctor Tesla, in your reality I didn't even friggin' exist. But I'm just trying to get home, like you, ok? Back to my own crappy reality!" She turned her head taking in the whole group. "Henry, it's so good to know you are alive and well somewhere. I…I really miss you. I miss all of you." She turned to Nikola, and a look of such love flared in her normally guarded eyes. "Da…oh Da, I wish that I could have…I lost it, I'm sorry."

She crumpled to the floor then, crying, and for some reason Nikola stepped forward, bending down to hug the poor lost girl. He'd never had a daughter, and Ashley Magnus was the closest he'd ever felt to having some kind of child. In fact, when he'd first heard that Helen was pregnant, he'd wondered if he should return, should…"I came back to your mother, didn't I. When she was carrying you in the 1990s? I didn't talk myself out of it."

Ashley nodded, taking deep breaths and trying to stem the flow of tears. "Yes. She always said that you making her laugh kept her from the worst of pregnancy moods swings. You were married when I turned two. I think you waited so that I could be the flower girl." She looked him straight in the eyes, that crystal blue that seemed to see so far. "You weren't my biological father, but you were my Da…and when Mom died…"

"He raised you." Helen knelt next to them, her eyes warmer than before. She didn't reach out to touch this Ashley, but she must have felt the instinct, just as Nikola did. "He always does have excellent fatherly instincts."

"I wanted to bring forth an entire race. Of course I do."

Both Helen and Ashley laughed.

Wolfboy was obviously a bit slow on the uptake. "But, how the heck did you get here? I mean, what the fuck is going on?"

"Language, Henry!"

"Sorry Doc, but…"

Nikola didn't want to wait around while the others took their bloody time catching up. "Fast version, Helen here is from an alternate reality where she and I married in the 1880s. Ashley is from an alternate reality where Helen married me in the 1990s. And there's some little furry rodent running around in some other dimension to blame for the whole mess. I'm sure Stephen Hawking would just love to ponder all this. He's one of the few modern scientists I have any respect for. Especially with his limitations. I'm sure he's got vampire genes."

"Nikola, you are babbling. You're nervous, or you are thinking. Which is it?"

He turned to Ashley, still half in his arms, "It didn't start with Marko, did it?"

She looked at him like he was crazy. "Who's Marko? I dated a Marko once, but I was engaged to Henry."

"Really!" Henry piped up, having stopped aiming the massive weapon a while back.

Ashley gave him a soft smile. "Guess we never got that far here and now. I think Da being so protective kind of brought you to the point quicker. Oh, and I was so pissed at those goons for shooting at you! I kicked their asses to kingdom come for that, let me tell you."

Her eyes had gone black, and her nails lengthened. Nikola dropped her and scooted away, as did everyone else. "What?" Her eyes went back to blue. "Look, the damn multimet is afraid of me now, and I didn't want him to jump without me. I hired people to get to him, but they screwed up royally. And I told them not to shoot at anybody!"

"Why are you a vampire, Ashley?" Nikola gritted out, wishing to heaven and hell that he wasn't so damn weak now.

Henry had raised the weapon again, "Look, Ash, I'm sure that you can tell a good story, but in this here and now, when our Ash went all vampy, she'd been doped up and tainted by the Cabal and we had to kill you to keep you from taking over the damn world."

"Dammit, Da! You and your overcompensating fix-its!" She blew out a frustrated breath, and it was so characteristic of Ashley Magnus that everyone relaxed slightly. "Da…Nikola here went berserk when I had a bad case of pneumonia as a kid and he cooked up some serum from his blood and Mom's and Uncle James and even managed to talk some out of Clara and Druitt. So, I have a bit of everything if I want to access it, or if I'm pissed, ok?"

"Fascinating." Nikola choked out.

"Don't pull out your Spock routine Da, it's not funny." Her stomach chose that moment to grumble loudly, and Henry actually laughed.

"Yeah, it's definitely Ash. Only her stomach would make that kind of noise in a moment like this."

"Shut up, wolfie. You're the one who will get out of bed in order to find a bag of Cheetos and rootbeer."

Everyone in the room, from this reality or any other, blinked at that sharing of too much information.

"Ok then," Will rubbed his hands together. "Shall we adjourn to the kitchen to get our two visitors some sustenance?"

"Well, I need a glass of wine." Nikola offered his arm to Helen, who grabbed on to it with a practiced ease and a firmness that in Victorian times would have clearly showed the world that he was her husband. He swallowed.

"You do still drink tea here, yes?" Helen looked up with him, a touch of laughter still in her lovely eyes.

"First flush Darjeeling from Balatun. When we are out you are inconsolable and grouchy beyond belief."

She sighed in pleasure.

Ashley's laughter was full of melancholy, "We still had it in the house, no matter what. Da drank it every morning. He said that it smelled like you."

Helen and Ashley stared at each other, Helen with sympathy and Ashley with a kind of hunger. Nikola was sad for his Helen, who would have given anything, even her immortality, for a chance to hold Ashley in her arms one more time.

"How long have I been dead in your world, Ashley? And why?"

Henry had taken Ashley by the hand and was leading her out of the room. "Sorry Doc, pizza first. Impossible questions later."

"Oh god, pizza! I haven't had pizza in a decade. Do they still make pepperoni?"


	5. Regrets and Warnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashley sleeps, Nikola learns where he went wrong, and Helen wonders how to get back

He watched Helen as she stared at the girl on the sofa. No doubt Helen was trying to see herself and her mortal enemy combined in her round face and messy blonde hair. Even in sleep, this Ashley Magnus, no…Ashley Tesla, she'd taken his name. Her adoptive father's name. It still seemed so unreal.

This Ashley had lived as hard if not a harder life than the one he'd known only too briefly. She slept fitfully, lightly, her hand held curled as though ready to spring for a weapon or rip and tear with her claws. He found himself wondering if he had taught her this wariness, or if he had comforted her as a father, holding her when the fear became too much.

He'd wanted to. The instinct surged in his chest, completely unexpected. He repressed it, studied it within his mind like a visitor who only spoke an incomprehensible language. Helen stood suddenly, and with a regal wave motioned him to the opposite side of the large library, not wanting to disturb the girl whose presence made her question so much. She walked with such grace, so familiar and yet so much closer to his dreams. He suddenly wanted to impress her and set off the Praxian map, not just to find out if she'd discovered it in her world, but to see the glow in her eyes that his Helen always had when she looked at the wonder of it surrounding the two of them as they searched for answers within it.

But now was not the time. This Helen simply looked tired and defeated, if still lovely. She turned to face him, anger sparking in those blue depths. Anger very much directed at himself. "I choose at this moment not to think of how we could have mangled things so badly as to have never married. I also choose not to consider how I would have ever been in a position to engage in congress with John Druitt when the man was head over heels in love with James from the moment they met, much less the monster he turned into later."

He opened his mouth and she held up a hand.

"No explanations please. I have no doubt that this world's version of myself holds a good deal of the blame for the fiasco that is her life. At the very least the Sanctuary network seems to exist and runs well in both places. Mankind is not in a dark age as yet," She looked around the library with interest. "Though all these wires are most disconcerting. I can't imagine you in the same room with them without flinching. I do hope that there is at least a global web for communication?"

"Yes, at least for the last fifteen years or so."

She grimaced. "Oh dear…perhaps our personal peccadillos have mucked things up rather too well. It's half a century old and ubiquitous in my world. I don't suppose you invented the micro transistor in 1930 then? Or the wireless power grid in '47?"

"I had thought about them, but I never…I was rather busy…"

She crossed her arms, "Let me guess, you went from loathing your vampiric state to embracing it with an unmitigated wonder and became obsessed with bringing back Vampirus Sanguinius from extinction and taking over the world?"

He swallowed, staring at her as she chided him. "Well, when you say it like that it does sound rather childish."

"It was rather. One week on the sofa rather than in our bed seemed to have given you a new perspective on the matter."

"Oh, you can't be that good."

She raised an eyebrow and cocked her head, giving him a slow sultry smile.

"Bugger. You are that good."

She leaned forward on the table between them, the simple blouse Helen had donned that morning unbuttoned just enough that he could see a fairly generous helping of her cleavage. "No, Nikola. We are that good. Together."

His eyes slammed shut and he groaned. This was absolute torture, like all of his most heartfelt dreams were coming to life and tormenting him for not bringing them into existence. She held still there, that siren's smile on her lips, and he saw the scar on the side of her neck, unmistakably the work of a vampire. He reached his hand toward it, almost against his will, and she pushed him away.

"Don't it's…it's his, not yours. You never earned it." Her eyes were like blue flames, and he drew back, wary of the heat.

But he couldn't keep the wistful smile from his lips. "Dare I ask how he earned it?"

She blasted him with a smile that was pure sex and he felt slammed with lust so strong he had to rake his nails over his palms in order to not jump on her. She was not his Helen. If his Helen had smiled at him like that, she'd be on the floor with his head buried between her sweet thighs and damn the witnesses. "You can ask, but I have no obligation to answer. My guess is you know enough about your ancestors to take a damn good guess."

It was a mating mark, or he was Edison's puppy dog. Rare even among vampires, a mated pair wore the scars of their partners for a lifetime. He had so many questions, so much that he wanted to investigate. How his life could have been, might yet be, so very different…

"No doubt you have questions, but it is not my job to fix the mess you and your Helen have made of your lives. It is my job to get back to my own reality and return her to yours. Whatever you might do with any knowledge gained is up to you. As time travel is not involved, I do not think that I must watch everything I do here for possible repercussions throughout my own history and future." Helen was all business again, and he had to swallow down all his desire. Just as he had done for over a century.

"Not unless Adam Worth comes to visit again."

She blew out a breath. "Oh dear…is Hyde causing problems? I thought he was safely locked away in Praxis?"

He perked up at this. "So, you've been to Praxis as well?"

"No, they sent an emissary to discuss opening relations, and I seriously doubt you have been there, as they would not have let a blood demon into Praxis under any circumstances, even if you have managed to lose your full suite of powers for the time being."

It was very comforting to feel this Helen's absolute conviction that he would once again be a vampire. He hated mortality with a passion.

"Adam Worth returned to the service and managed to give you a nasty case of 'ripping sickness' caused by mucking about with time and space travel through an alternate dimension. You were dying," he took in a deep breath and gripped the back on a chair in front of him. It still hurt to think about Helen dying. "And your illustrious team worked together to send you down to Praxis to find the cure. After a variety of misadventures and some hidden plan of John's involving Worth that has yet to come to light, and I'm certain shall not be pleasant, you did return, hale and hearty." He looked up at her, and he knew his eyes were not shuttered. She must be able to see how much he loved his Helen. And this was probably the one person in this universe he could admit that to without fear.

She swallowed and moved forward, and if there was not a table between them, Nikola knew she would have taken him into her embrace. She whispered to him, her tone almost pleading, "What moment was it that made the difference between this reality and mine? With six billion people and thousands of moments, millions of decisions to choose from, yet I have no doubt that it is one of us who has created this world. What moment drove us apart, Nikola?"

He grit his teeth and forced back the tears that threatened. He had not cried for a century, and he would not cry now. "I think it a case of bad timing. By the time I was ready to risk our friendship to propose to you, Druitt had nearly swept you off your feet with his poetry and romanticism." He spat out the last words, still bitter about Helen's weakness to fall for such tripe. Such duplicitous tripe. John Druitt was a violent bastard long before the Source blood came into the equation, and he'd felt the threat in him every time he'd tried to talk to Helen.

"I wanted you for years before we even met Druitt, Nikola. In my reality, there was a night…you'd developed a prototype for a wireless telephone, and…"

"And you almost kissed me." He looked up and down her body, and remembered her flying into that little basement in her chemise, all warm skin and golden curls. "You were so beautiful, I couldn't trust myself to act like a gentleman. I…I fled."

"I asked you to kiss me?" She moved around the table, and he had the vague feeling he was being stalked by a lioness, all gamine grace and deadly intent.

"No, you…you just looked at me. I thought you might…but I was just your friend. Younger than you, more naïve and awkward..."

She pressed a finger to his lips. "That is it then. My fault. Or my avatar's fault. She never asked you to kiss her. You are too much a gentleman to take anything from someone you love, even something as simple as a kiss."

"Your kisses are never simple, Helen." She stood before him and pressed her lips to his, firm and so sweet. She pulled away before he could deepen the kiss, but that was for the best. She wasn't his Helen.

She crossed her arms, a look of fierce determination on her face. No one could deny this Helen…Tesla. "You are going to help me build a device to lure a multimet across dimensions. I've made enough of a study of Marco that I may be able to mimic some of their mating scenarios."

He laughed heartily. "How little you ask of me, Helen, to place a fake booty call between realities?"

"Booty call? Nikola, I would never have suspected you of knowing such language. What on earth does that mean?"

"You want me to send out a fake mating call between reality streams. It would be easier to try and build a machine to travel from one to the next, simply to keep jumping until…"

"No!" Ashley screamed out, standing up from the couch across the room with lightning speed. She ran to them so fast he was sure she was going to attack, and he cursed his lack of claws for defense. But instead Ashley wrapped her arms around him hugging him so tightly his ribs ached. She drew back and her eyes were pitch black. Her voice filled with power. "Da, you cannot, you must not do that again!"

8080808080808

The luxury of the vehicle suited this Nikola just as much as it would have her own. He lounged like a great panther, rapt in contemplation, staring out the darkened glass of the window without seeing anything. This Nikola's mind was whirring with thoughts. She knew her own Nikola enough not to bother him until he was ready, or she'd just be on the receiving end of a razor sharp tongue.

"I've considered the problem for quite some time, Helen, ever since my wife became fascinated by the possibilities represented in that rodent she and Anya call Marko." He sniffed in disdain, and she took a strange pleasure in such a familiar action in this version of Nikola Tesla. He was still cocky, superior, and confident, although perhaps she'd managed over the course of a century to dim the megalomania to reasonable levels." He twisted a handkerchief between his elegant hands, "The problem with constructing a machine with the ability to find and pinpoint one single alternate reality among the countless trillions that exist. If every decision, every moment has a multitude of potential bifurcations, the number of realities that can exist would be mind-numbing." He turned to her, frustration evident in his eyes.

She shrugged, unwilling to lose hope. "I would hypothesize that closely related realities must exist closer to each other somehow, whatever closer might mean when dimensionality is meaningless. I should think it would be easier to exchange matter with a reality closer to our own than one in which the dinosaurs never went extinct."

He smiled at her, "Of course, my lo…Helen. But how to trace my wife to one particular moment, one particular choice?"

She bit her lip. Her earlier vision when she lay in Helen Tesla's bedchamber filled her mind. "When you first were working on a wireless telephone in the basement of Father's house in Oxford, did I…"

"A man does not forget the night he asks his wife to marry him. Especially when it's also the night of their first kiss." He cupped her cheek and looked at her, his eyes revealing everything that her Nikola always guarded so very tightly.

"We never…I never kissed you that night. I was too worried about losing you as a friend."

"Ah, so similar. Brilliant people able to convince ourselves to ignore our instincts to our detriment. And I suppose I never managed to let you know how desperately I was in love with you?"

"Not until a few years ago. And even then, you were in the midst of trying to kill me."

He snorted, "I seriously doubt that. I was probably putting on a show to impress you." He looked at her with a smile. Not a smirk, not a leer, but a soft, true smile that had his heart in his eyes. She'd seen that kind of smile on her Nikola, but rarely. She'd never trusted herself to understand what it meant, but on this one, she knew. Nikola loved her, or at least his version of her. After a century, could such love have survived everything that had come between them?

Had her Nikola been telling the truth in Rome, the last time she'd seen that smile?

"We'll get you home, Helen. I only wish I could come with you for a few minutes and give me a good swift kick in the ass for screwing up so monumentally badly as to have lost you.

"He never had me."

Nikola raised an eyebrow, and she cursed how well he knew her.

"I cannot remember a time in our relationship, Helen, in which I was not magnetically attracted to you. I knew you were my mate long before I was changed into a vampire. I knew it the moment you walked into class in the crimson dress and thumbed your pretty little nose at all the idiot boys who denied your brilliance. No other woman would ever hold me as captive as you. I cannot conceive of any version of me that would think any differently, not in a hundred million realities."

She knew that her cheeks were brilliant red with her blush, and she had to push down her instincts which screamed at her to kiss the man so close to her. She had no right to this Nikola. And she'd likely alienated her own past the point of any hope for romance long ago.

"We need to get you home. I want my wife back, for I have the most extraordinary urge to make love to her until neither of us can walk."

"Nikola!"

He laughed. "My wife sounds exactly the same. And I know that she is more aroused than scandalized by such declarations. I wonder if my counterpart suspects the same of you?"

"Focus, Nikola. How do we get Marko to go back to one particular reality?"

He sighed. "It would be easier to develop a tool to jump between realities completely, making a tunnel to find the right parameter by testing multiple realities for match."

Her head suddenly throbbed, as though she'd been struck a blow. She had a sudden flash of Ashley, crying desperate, her eyes huge and black but filled with despair rather than anger. "You cannot!"

"Helen? Is something wrong? Why the outcry?" He held her hand and she was surprised how much comfort she took from the act.

"I…I had a vision. Of my daughter. In my reality she's dead, but it was so clear. She was desperate to stop something."

Helen rarely cried, but she could not stop the tears from cascading down her cheeks. Nikola pulled her into his arms, holding her, whispering soft words in Serbian to sooth her as she wept out a grief that never left her for long.

"She was my daughter, taken from me and altered by the Cabal. Driven mad. She died saving the Sanctuary. Ashley. Perhaps, in another reality, she still lives?"

"No doubt, Helen. But I fear that way lies madness."

She clung to him, knowing he was right, but wishing that somehow, someway, she could hold her daughter in her arms one more time.


	6. Vows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen receives comfort, Nikola makes a vow.

The comfort she felt in his arms seemed foreign. She could not remember feeling like this since she'd lost her mother. Her father was never one to cuddle or soothe, he'd expected her to endure. John's comfort was trite words and promises that never were fulfilled. Even when she'd wrapped John's arms around her in that dank hotel room in Southeast Asia, she was seeking a ghost of true comfort. This is what had been missing from her life for so long. Someone with whom she could break down entirely, and who would help her pick up the pieces and start again and still, still would love her. Could her own Nikola Tesla care half so much? Had she been missing this for a century?

The arms cradling her tightened as her tears abated. He took in a deep breath, and she could feel the tension in him. "We lost a child as well." Nikola whispered into her hair. "Helen was taken by Druitt and the Reich's Ahnenerbe in the late '30s. You…she was five months along at the time. I tore apart half of Prague looking for her. By the time I found her she'd had the babe ripped from her womb and she was near death. I took her to James and Anya in London, and we kept her alive, but she'd lost a part of herself. I lost a part of myself. I ended up back home in Croatia, ripping to pieces any Nazi I could find. It was the first time I'd let the monster in me free reign. You needed me, and I wasn't there. It wasn't until well after the war ended that we managed to find our way back to each other. By that time, the Cabal had formed, and Druitt was making Rippers from his own cloned children injected with the blood of our dead son."

She shuddered at the pain in his voice, realizing the implications of a world in which crazed superabnormals like they'd made Ashley into were a constant risk. It explained Bigfoot holding a gun, the EM shields, everything.

She drew away slightly, almost afraid of how badly she wanted to comfort him, hold him. It was easier to ask when everything had happened than why. And it was far easier to change the subject. "When did you go public with the existence of abnormals? There's no way this level of technology and security could exist without…"

He chuckled softly, moving away from her across the seat and leaving her room to draw breath without the fear of crushing her lips to his. "It was a slow process. We stopped faking our aging by the time of WWII. I don't think either of us gave a damn anymore. The questions started in the press, and Helen and I managed to dodge them, given the war that was brewing. After the war, there were many incidents of destruction and havoc, unexplained and the source of general anxiety, political chaos, and many comic book plots. The communists were blamed of course, but it was the Cabal. When war once again loomed large in the early 60's, President Kennedy was attacked and killed on a trip to Dallas, along with over ten thousand people that had come to see him along the route. It was a small army of Rippers that the Cabal had lost control over, and there was no way to cover up that level of destruction.

"It was then that the UN decided to reveal the true breadth of our organization, and Helen and I became even greater celebrities. There was a special force started under the auspices of the UN and NATO, and we helped develop their training. I helped to create the network of EM shields that protect most of the civilized world. We've fought a slow battle ever since against a group of would-be terrorists that wish to destroy all abnormals and control the fate of every being on the planet. We've fought coups and plagues and stupidity for fifty years, and now we've achieved a near stalemate."

A world in which the Cabal was ever present and all pervasive. In which everyone lived with the fear of being without defenses. "It sounds horrifying. How, how do you survive it, day after day?"

"Someone has to protect humanity from their own blunders." She could feel Nikola's grin and she turned in his arms, his face, his lips far too close to hers. "I survive because of you. And Anya and Dmitri and Sophie. You've…my Helen gave me a family, somewhere to belong when my own family discarded me as a distasteful inconvenience. You gave me a purpose, Helen. You expected me to be better, and I hate to fail you."

It was not possible to resist kissing him. His lips were firm and warm and fit over hers with a heady perfection. She remembered this from Rome, but she'd been too angry at his disappearance to appreciate how perfect a kiss could be. Nikola broke away with a sigh and she had to sink her nails into her palms to resist wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him to her, making him take her right there across the leather seat.

"We need to get you home. Though I might have you memorize a speech from me to give to your version of Nikola. And possibly ask you to give him a good swift kick in the ass from me. If he let you hurt this much, let your daughter die, then he must ache inside as much as I would. As I have. He'll need a good yelling at, then some quality make up sex. Best cure for all that ails one."

80808080808080808

Ashley clutched to Nikola's shirt, tears streaming for her eyes. "Da, you can't do that again. You can't! You can't build it. It's destroyed, and I hope to God no one every builds one again." She wrapped her arms around him and clutched him as though he was her link to sanity. Nikola enfolded her in his arms rather than try to push her away, his heart aching for the pain this girl, a piece of his Helen…well, some Helen. Awkwardly, he stroked her hair, his eyes flickering to those of the woman so close to the one he wanted.

"She's been through a great deal. More than the front she's putting on. She'd reed thin, and she ate earlier like she hadn't seen food in months. If I were to guess, she hasn't had a home in a very long time." Helen's eyes were glistening, touched with tears for this daughter she never had.

"Ashley…child. Tell us about where you come from. What has you so scared?"

Her cheek stayed against his chest, but her voice was remarkably strong, if a bit monotone.

"When Mama died, you went a bit mad. She'd gone down fighting the Cabal of course, and you couldn't get there in time, not when you were stuck in containment in London. You stayed in denial when she was buried, and worked through it until you came up with an antidote to the plague they'd set out, but it was almost too late. There were so few abnormals left, and the Cabal kept coming, looking for proof of Praxis and a way to destroy everyone and everything that wasn't human."

"How did they…" Nikola cut in.

"Shush, Niko! Let her speak." Helen gave him "the look" and he knew he'd best shut up and listen.

He stroked Ashley's hair and she took a breath. "We were in hiding in India, the Mumbai Sanctuary had survived the initial waves of Cabal and had scattered quite effectively. Then, the little furball showed up, just blipped out of nowhere, right into Da's lap. You…Da had barely spoken in weeks, he barely ate, but when Furball appeared, unaffected by the plague and obviously abnormal, Da woke up. He started studying the little guy and treating it like a pet. When he figured out that it existed across multiple realities, he went nuts. The situation was getting worse and worse, more and more governments falling to Cabal control, more and more friends dying miserable deaths. When the first nuclear bomb went off over Chicago, he started building a machine to move to another reality, to keep jumping until we found someplace where it was safe for us, where we had no counterparts to displace.

"But I knew better." She sobbed suddenly, and emotion entered her voice again. Tears stained Nikola's shirt as she wept. "He wanted to find another version of Mama. It made him alive again, until it didn't."

There was a long pause, but Nikola understood. "I died? I suppose I had to somewhere."

Helen kicked him, but Ashley chuckled. "Oh, it's good to hear you act like you are supposed to - an egotistical loveable bastard, that's my Da."

"And my husband." Helen glared at him lovingly.

"What happened to your Da, Ashley?" Nikola needed to know. Playing with reality streams would be incredibly dangerous, but losing Helen would drive him to do it. He had to understand what had happened, and how he could fix his own damn mistakes and do it right this time.

"Troops were at every entrance to the bunker we were in, this one in the middle of the outback in Australia. There was nowhere to hide, we'd thought no one had been able to track us…but they'd tortured Uncle James, broken him into thinking that Da was trying to destroy the world with some kind of doomsday machine and he'd found us for them." Tears ran down her face, but her voice sounded like a meditative chant – she needed to tell this story before it burned her up inside. "We'd built too well…there was no way in and no way out. We knew the bomb was coming. Da had been shot badly in the last escape, so much that it would have taken weeks and a lot of blood we didn't have to fix him up right. He was weak. Too weak."

"I told you to go – to find somewhere to start over." Nikola whispered, but it rang through the library.

"I would have done the same." Helen reached out to stroke Ashley's hair, and it was the most natural thing in the world for Nikola, despite twelve decades of hating people touching him, to bring an arm around this Helen and bring them all into a hug. From three different realities, three people who all needed comfort found it in each other.

Ashley began to weep again, silent sobs that racked her body. "I swore I would come back for him, that I would save our world. But there was such an explosion when he sent me through the portal, I was so badly burned it took weeks for me to recover. I think they may have set off the bomb, and combined with the power of that damn device…there may not be a reality for me to go back to. There's nowhere I can call home."

"I promise you, Ashley. You will always have a home with me." Nikola may have been thickheaded in matters of the heart, with timing that had cost him the love of his life more than once, but in this he knew the right thing to do. Now – if only he could get back the Helen that would be overjoyed to hold this girl in her arms, rather than the one missing her own children.


	7. Finding home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The way back is full of realizations.

Helen Magnus held the hand of the man who was and was not her husband. He seemed to understand her need for silence, and he let her stare out the window at this strange new world and let her mind spin moonbeams of could have, would have, should have.

When the air car got back to the Sanctuary, Nikola took charge easily, naturally, like he was born to command. It was more than a little arousing. He was the same as her Nikola, but so very different. He was every bit the partner of which she'd barely dared dream.

He took it upon himself to explain to the team - their daughter Anya, Henry, a hired gun named Safir and Biggie - that Helen was not quite herself. It was critical to keep the information quiet, given the fame and power of the Magnus-Tesla name. She had to claim illness and avoid the dedication of a hospital, an opera gala, and a holographic speech at the opening of a UN conference on economic empowerment for women.

Instead, she sat in on a holographic conference call with her counterpart's son Dmitri. Nikola and their son spoke in a rapid fire mix of Serbian and English about technology so advanced her mind could only flirt with the edges of understanding. Dmitri was taller than Nikola, more obviously muscular, his hair a dark red and his smile wide and infectious. He had the same manic energy, but obviously a bit more of her patience. He was working at Moon Base Gamma, a half a million miles away, on a teleportation system to bring supplies to the moon to expand from three colonies to six. Her heart thudded with pride for a child that wasn't hers, but could have been. He was magnificent. He also was able to convince Nikola that there was little they could do – in truth all she could do was stay in physical contact with little Marko and hope that her Nikola, the Nikola who might have loved her from afar for over a century, could lure Marko back to the right reality and bring this world-shaking Nikola Tesla back his wife.

She had talked all day to him. Told him of the mortal condition of her version of Nikola, of her team, of the history of her world. He seemed fascinated by her tales of the elemental that possessed her John Druitt – wondering if that was somehow a solution to their own plight in this reality. She hoped it was. She hoped this crazy adventure would somehow turn a benefit beyond the secret knowledge growing in her heart and a longing for the impossible.

Late in the evening, she spoke with Sophie, the baby of the Tesla family, working on her second PhD at MIT. Sophie was full of curiousity and sympathetic sadness and silly jokes. The girl was so close in age to her own Ashley that Helen wept at the end of that holo call – Sophie had the same shade of blue eyes as Ashley, the same shade as Helen's own mother.

As though he could read her every mood, Nikola had once again held her in his arms and let her cry into the hollow of his throat. He'd carried her to their bedroom and held her until she'd fallen into a restless sleep. Her dreams were full of a roller-coaster mix of terror and exultation – one moment she was naked on a moonlit hill, riding her fiancé to a brilliant climax as he smiled up at her, eyes black with need. The next, she was in labor with Ashley, staring into his blue-gray eyes as she crushed his hand with each contraction. Then she was pinned beneath him, nightgown torn to shreds and blonde hair a riot on blood stained damask sheets, his cock impaling her as his teeth sank into her neck, her blood keeping him alive as pleasure burned into her soul. She was fighting, the recoil of her handgun slamming into her already injured wrists, her lungs burning for breath as pain erupted into her back, curling around her spine as talons tore into her spinal cord and she choked back a final scream, the faces of her family – Ashley and Nikola, fading into smoke…

Her eyes snapped opened, the aftertaste of gunpowder and blood fading from her lips as she gasped in a breath of electric-scented air. Nikola lay on his side, his eyes closed and brow furrowed as he rested in the half-doze that passed for vampiric sleep. One arm was wrapped loosely around her waist, her leg curled over his calf and their hips were pressed together – giving her a wealth of evidence that one trait was shared in the morning hours by man and vampire alike. She swallowed thickly, trying to suppress her body's very natural reaction to the virile evidence of a man who could be her mate. His eyes opened as she watched his face, and a smile flirted with the edges of his lips. His hips rolled slightly, pressing against her center with a hard insistence that made her whimper softly and blush hard. He moved toward her to capture her lips, then he stilled and breathed out a puff of air against her lips that made them tingle with longing as though she was an untried and desperate youth.

"Not my Helen, but still so very very lovely." He whispered, then changed his trajectory to press a chaste kiss against her cheekbone. Her womb clenched in frustration and she willed her hormones to cease their wicked control of her mind and body.

Alas, her tongue was still not quite under her command, "Is it like this every morning? To wake up this?"

He pushed himself up on one elbow, a study of artfully rumpled grace as he looked down at her with bright eyes. "Yes. Although there are far fewer clothes and sometimes the wake up call is even more…climatic shall we say."

She closed her eyes and grit her teeth as her skin flared brilliant red with another blush – how could she blush so much at her age? He chuckled, but didn't press his victory. As she opened her eyes he rolled off the bed. "I'll leave you to your ablutions, Doctor Magnus. But hurry along. Although I estimate it will be at least another fourteen hours before I could come up with a tachyonic amplifier, your Nikola in all his sexual frustration might be even faster than I am. Better get ahold of Marko to catch your ride back to that idiot."

"He's not a…" She stopped, laughing to herself at her instinctive need to defend her version of Nikola. "If he is an idiot, than I am even more so. I was the one who…"

He pressed a finger to her lips, "I would have found a time. I would have found the courage to tell you, to show you what we could be together. If he didn't, he is an idiot, and he's suffered for it for a century. Will you let him continue to suffer?"

She stared into those familiar eyes and bit her lip, knowing the answer and yet terrified to lose her heart again, to risk the walls that protected her for so long. He smirked at her, that wonderful familiar twist of a smile, and swept out of the room. She was just taking off her blouse, standing in a black lace bra when he popped back in, a leer on his face. "Oh, in case you are interested in getting your own vampire back intact, there's a repository of vampires on ice outside of Khartoum. Good place to blow up when you get the chance. You might be able to extract a blood sample from the queen, Afina. But don't wake her up. Boring in her treachery and a bad dresser to boot. Fortunately we had the right demolition equipment to ensure that there wasn't going to be another dark age of humankind. I really didn't want the competition for our progeny."

He ducked out of the door way and left her standing gobsmacked and half dressed. Infuriating fellow.

8080808080808

Nikola blinked exhaustion from his eyes as he secretly swallowed another caffeine pill. He'd been up for over 30 hours, but had to finish this before the damned creature decided to jump somewhere else and strand his Helen in another reality forever. The curved metal tubes bent around the large room, engulfing it in a circle of metal and plastic that crowded out every other project. All else was gladly sacrificed – it wasn't everyday he got to build a miniature supercollider.

"You'll push yourself too far and collapse, Nikola. You don't want to make a mistake. I won't bother asking you to sleep, I know you better than that, but at least stop and eat something. You are mortal for now at least." Helen Tesla, the woman he could have had if he'd not been such a blithering coward, perched on a lab table, swinging her legs back and forth gently as she looked at the huge device he was cobbling together from the equivalent of dental floss and paperclips.

Ashley and Henry had aided him in the beginning, for the heavy lifting and scavenging the components from throughout the Sanctuary – the basement lighting system and upper SHU secondary containment would need substantial repair at some point. The two young people had talked while he'd listened, learning more and more about this young woman he'd claimed protection over. She was brilliant and tough, but somehow softer than he'd remembered this world's Ashley, more vulnerable. He didn't know how he was going to take the place of the father she'd lost. She'd been close to falling asleep on her feet when he'd sent Henry and her off to rest for a bit. He was confident that the boy would return in perhaps an hour or two to be a technical sounding board and another pair of somewhat competent hands. The HAP was perhaps one of the finest assistants he'd ever had – not that he'd ever admit that to his face. But right now, he needed time to work on his own.

But Helen, Helen in any form was always welcome. She set fire to his mind in every way. He was so much more when he was around her.

He set down the gold-tipped tweezers he held and pushed away from the lab bench. He stretched his arms above his head and grinned at this visiting Helen. "I thought you were monitoring Ashley?"

She smiled at him sadly. "I think she finally drifted into a real sleep. Your promise meant a lot to her. And I know you will fulfill it, even if you yourself aren't sure you can."

He chuckled, "You do know me too well. How can I be a father? I'm renown for my utter disdain of the domestic. Biographers have waxed poetic about my asexual, obsessive-compulsive tendencies even before I officially died. Not a paternal bone in my body."

She laughed loudly, the sound ringing through the lab, "Asexual? Oh my lord, that is…" she clutched her stomach and practically rolled into a ball with the strength of her laughter. She was utterly bewitching, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright, rather how he imagined she would be during other activities. She finally recovered and stated unequivocally, "You are a magnificent father, Nikola. Perhaps a bit inept with discipline at times, but you love your children with a fierceness that is unequaled. They are your little scientists – able to enjoy discovery and curiosity with a passion you understand instinctively. You even put up with snotty noses and petulant tears in the face of your love for them. Be yourself, perhaps with a bit of effort to not be self-centered, and you will be just fine."

He stared at her with his heart in his eyes, her ferocious smile one that he loved so much. He wanted to stride across the space between them and pull her into his arms. He envisioned laying her out on the lab bench, losing himself in her body, the swell of her pregnant stomach rising between them…he shook himself, remembering once again that this woman in the tight black trousers and green silk blouse was not his Helen. The vision was so vivid he wondered if he had fallen asleep over his work and was dreaming.

He was so distracted with the erotic vision in his mind that he missed the click clack of her heels and she approached. She cupped his cheek, brushing her thumb over his chin and smiling softly. She said nothing, and he closed his eyes, leaning into her touch like a cat in search of a scratch.

"You missed this, Nikola. I know how much you love me to touch you – no one else. How long has it been Nikola, since someone held you? Since you felt fingertips on your skin, held a hand in yours? You thrive on this, Nikola. How much hurt has your soul hidden in a century without?"

He shuddered slightly, closing his eyes against the sudden onslaught of tears. He sucked in a breath.

"I managed. I always survive. I plotted how to bring back a great race. And I will succeed someday and rule this planet with a wise and benevolent hand."

She drew away, as had been in intention. Helen always was disgusted with his plans of world domination. But this Helen merely laughed softly. "Oh Niko, you wouldn't much like the world they would make. We ran into the last of the vampires a few years ago. Frozen in time outside of Khartoum. A whole army, waiting for their turn at ruling an empire, and betrayed by their own. They planned on treating this Earth as their pantry, and to destroy humanity's independence with a ruthless hand. And you, my Nikola, you were a mongrel meant to be crushed under heel. Your great vampire culture is a bunch of fascists that you would be first in line to fight, as you know what evil such creatures can do, what knowledge they can destroy."

He opened his eyes and stared into hers, then spun away, clutching the edge of the table, nausea causing his stomach to roil. He'd known. He'd known on some level that was the truth. That he was never going to belong to the great vampiric race. That he was an outcast, always. Arms folded around him, embracing him with warm comfort. Her voice whispered in his ear, "You wouldn't want to belong, Nikola. You are better than them, in every way."

He whirled in her arms, slamming his lips into hers, kissing her with a hunger that had boiled in him for a lifetime. She returned the kiss at first, before pulling away, leaving him to remember that she wasn't his Helen. His Helen wouldn't have…

"She would say the same, Nikola. You wouldn't be here in her Sanctuary, drinking her wine and cluttering up her labs with your brilliance. She wouldn't keep one of your cravats in the drawer with her stockings if she didn't think you were magnificent, Nikola, even without an empire to offer her."

He grinned widely, determined to discover where his Helen had obtained a piece of his neckwear for her private fantasies. This Helen cocked her head at him, "Don't get too smug, Nikola. I trusted you with this knowledge of my other self, and I expect you to be responsible with the use of this intelligence."

His heart pounded in his chest. Any confirmation that Helen might think of him as more than an annoying old friend was enough to revive him completely.

"Tell me again what the particle scatter ratio was in that damned creature's blood sample. As much as you can remember, Helen. I need to get you back before you combust from sexual frustration."

Her laugh rang out again, a sultry bell echoing through his mind. "It's the other you I'm worried about. He'll be hungry soon enough."

He frowned at her. "Easy enough to remedy, if he swallows that damn medication with a decent Merlot."

Her eyes widened. "Oh you poor, poor thing. That stuff is vile. My Nikola insists on taking it when I'm expecting, as he doesn't want to overtax my system but…oh, you don't know. You've never…oh Nikola." She gripped his arms, her eyes bright and demeanor no-nonsense. She was breathtaking. "If you ever manage to pull your head out of unmentionable places and win your Helen, remember this – you won't hurt her. She's made for you. She'll sustain you. Take from her what you need and it will reward you both. You will quench each others hunger. Don't be afraid of it."

He pulled away from her, eyes dark, lust screaming in his veins at the vision of Helen in his arms, her blood on his tongue, her satisfied smile, his mark at her throat.

He had to finish this; he had to get her back. They had their whole lives to begin.

8080808080808080808080

Helen sat in a hammock chair in the walled garden, the scent of plumeria and ginger teasing her with visions of tropical lagoons and Nikola powering through the water with unerring grace, swimming up to meet her on the shore wearing naught but a smile. Damn it, this world was far too seductive. She opened her eyes and stared down at the multimet curled in her lap, wondering how she was going to be able to return home and keep her distance from her own Nikola, when she'd finally unlocked the walls in her mind to every last fantasy she'd had of the man.

"Then don't. Don't resist."

Her eyes snapped up to see this world's Nikola Tesla stroll into the garden, his eyes bright and smile a familiar wry grin. He was relaxed, his cravat absent, his shirt unbuttoned and the seductive length of his neck visible, a dark red scar staining the pale skin of the right side of his throat. A scar that she was uncomfortably aware matched the span of her own teeth. What on earth did the pair of them get up to, if her avatar had left such scars on a vampire!

"How did you know what I was….oh you cheeky arse."

"You like that cheeky arse, Helen." He spun around and looked down at his shapely backside. "Unless the other me has grown lax and fat as a mortal. Perhaps I'm drooping a bit in your reality?" He looked so dismayed at that possibility that she laughed, causing Marko to shift and chitter in discontent on her stomach.

"Perhaps that is how to get you back to your Nikola, sweet Jelena. Make you laugh until that creature returns you to your world in displeasure."

"You'll be happy to know that your bottom remains just the same in my world, Nikola. And no, I would rather not risk ending up in a completely unknown reality by scaring this little one. It has been very educational to see another world, but I'm not sure my mind could quite handle another such jaunt without breaking down."

He sat down in a wicker lounge, looking regal even in relaxation. "You can handle quite a lot in my experience, Helen. Saving the world, nursing an infant vampire, and planning your son's wedding all in the same week. That was quite an exhausting year actually." He grinned at her. "But the celebration afterward was memorable. At least Sophie let us sleep – or not sleep – through the night."

She shivered again as vivid images crowded her mind, visions of naked skin and the taste of blood on her tongue, the glide of him inside of her, the scent of electricity and sex. She blew out a breath and willed her nipples to relax their painful tightening. Nikola winked at her and she embraced annoyance as an antidote to desire.

"All this inactivity is tiresome. Is there nothing I could do that's useful while I wait here with Marko?"

"Helen, I know you. You will not take a break unless I tie you down and force you to relax." Bugger, he was not helping, and by his smirk he knew it.

"And I'm sure you are no better, vampire. There are ballistic grade plastic handcuffs in the bedside drawer that your Helen must need to keep you from spending every hour in your lab."

Nikola's grin just got wider, "Oh, she doesn't really need those. A come hither look and I'd gladly be distracted as often as she desires. And she does desire. Often."

She closed her eyes in almost pain. "Damn you, Nikola. You really are evil."

"Nice guys finish first, Helen. Bad guys finish once their women finish for the fifth time."

"Nikola!"

"Too much?"

She groaned. She was going to be a shivering basket case of hormones. If her counterpart was half as flirty and knowledgeable as this Nikola was, her own Nikola was going to be hard as a rock when she got back, and the slightest breeze would tumble them into bed together. She didn't know whether or not to be terrified at the prospect. They needed to talk first, or they were going to screw everything up – again.

"We found one of your elementals, by the way." Nikola said casually, examining his fingernails in the false sunlight of the gardens grow-lights.

"What?" Helen was disoriented by the change in topic, her mind too caught up in her own world's complications.

"We have a young Ripper under sedation and magnetic isolation in the Moscow Sanctuary. I had them run a scan for a separate sentience pattern in the delta-wave spectrum, and there are two distinct intelligences existing within the mass of that creature. One is solely electromagnetic. I believe each Ripper is possessed by an elemental. A child, or an aspect of a hive mind, I don't know enough yet to do more than theorize. I'm not sure the Rippers themselves have anything above a toddler's capabilities. They are simply puppets."

She blanched, disgust and sorrow roiling in her gut. "We didn't have enough time to try to capture John's elemental. He took it back in before it escaped into the power grid – he was afraid what kind of havoc it would create if he wasn't there to try and fight it."

Nikola sneered. "How noble. You must have been a good influence on the man, as you have been on me. The man who was once John Druitt lost his battle against evil long ago. I have to say, I thought that all of this was his work, his madness alone. To know that he was corrupted by some devilish abnormal that feeds on chaos itself – that goes some way toward restoring my faith in humanity. Perhaps there is a way out of this hellish stalemate we've fought so hard for."

Helen smiled at him, words on encouragement on her lips. But the world turned amber, and the words were never spoken. She fell into darkness, and hoped for home.

When she woke, she half expected to see the ceiling of her bedroom and the knowledge that all of this had been a wild dream. She did not expect to be on a gurney in the med bay, and to look up into a roomful of faces and see her daughter's blue eyes staring back.

"Ashley?" she whispered, sorrow piercing her like a knife. She wasn't home – she was in another reality. One that would hurt even more than the last.

"Mama?" tears ran down Ashley's cheeks, and the girl who looked so much like her daughter threw herself into her arms, a cloud of blonde hair smelling like sunshine and gunpowder smothering her as the girl pressed her cheek against her shoulder.

Helen tightened her arms around the girl and closed her eyes, savoring this as a beautiful last opportunity rather than heartbreaking temptation. She opened them, and saw tentative smiles on every face, Will and Henry and even her hairy friend, but Nikola – Nikola's face held need, hope, and a love unmasked. "Welcome home, Helen. How was your trip?"

She looked down at the top of Ashley's head, confusion clouding her mind. "How? Am I back? You know that I'm…Nikola, are we?"

"You never rewarded me with a kiss for inventing the wireless phone, Helen. And I'm insufferably mortal. So don't shoot me anytime soon, infuriating woman. And yes, that is not your daughter. That's our daughter from yet another reality. And I'm keeping her, so get used to the idea."

Ashley giggled against her shoulder, and the sound sent happiness bubbling into Helen's soul. Ashley Tesla drew back and looked at her mother with a smile and red-rimmed eyes. "Hi Mama."

Oh, her Ashley always insisted on Mom, ever since she was six. This was a different Ashley. She'd have to remember that.

"You died, Mama. Three years ago. I know you aren't the same. And I know you and Da are idiots about each other here, but…can I stay, Mama? I mean, Doctor Magnus…"

"Mama. Call me Mama. We'll figure out everything else, but you'll always have a home with me."

Ashley let out a sob and clung to her again, burying her head against her shoulder again. Nikola looked down at her with a soft smile that she'd never seen before – on this version of the man.

"Where's Marko?"

Nikola nodded at the floor, where the creature sat placidly in a Plexiglas box, staring up with large dark eyes as it munched on a large juicy leaf of spinach. It looked unhappy. With a slow blink, it disappeared with a soft pop, as though it knew it's job was done.

"Ah, he left after all the false advertising. Let's hope he finds his girl somewhere soon." Nikola's voice was lighthearted, but his eyes spoke a language of deep feeling.

Helen let out a long breath and wrapped an arm around her daughter. She held out the other hand toward Nikola, who took it without hesitation. She smiled at him with tears running down her face, a laugh barely contained in her voice. "So, what would you think about a trip to Africa, Nikola, for old times sake? Perhaps around Khartoum? There's some ruins there I've heard could prove very interesting. Dangerous, but interesting."

His eyes widened, and he smiled shyly, surprise and happiness writ on every feature. He knew then, what was there. It could be everything he once said he'd wanted, the rebirth of his terrible people.

"You trust me with that, Helen?"

She nodded, unable to form words. She'd seen what he was capable of, what they were capable of, and it was beyond her wildest imaginings. "You wouldn't like the competition, Nikola. I'll keep you busy with other projects."

He smiled at her, pure heat in his eyes, and she grinned back. "I'm sure you can keep me tied up, Helen."

She tried not to react, but her blush gave her away. He laughed, and in the background she heard the groans of the other people in the room, but her heart was too full to care. He was going to be insufferable, and she was going to have fun taming him.

808080808

A week later, a week of letting this displaced Ashley adjust to a new world and letting the cracks in her heart mend just a little bit, Helen tossed and turned in her bed. She and Nikola were leaving for Sudan in the morning, after a week of long looks and random touches that edged into caresses but didn't quite cross a line into the blatantly sexual. She was beyond frustrated and worried that somehow they would still mess this up, that she would still end up a lonely ice queen and him a quasi-evil, solitary genius.

"Hello Helen." Nikola's voice rang inside her mind, and she was worried that now she was going insane after being transported through dimensions.

"No, you aren't insane, and you aren't dreaming either."

She sat up, looking around for him, despite knowing that the voice was inside her head - there was not a sound in her silent room. No handsome vampire in her bedroom, alas. Wait – could he be reading her…

"And no, I can't hear you Helen. I can broadcast my thoughts, but I can't receive yours. But I can imagine what you are thinking. You are thinking I'm the sexiest genius in this reality, aren't you. In fact, you can't wait to come give me a reward." She could almost hear him taking a deep breath as he paused, "Tell me, sweet Helen, did I disturb your dreams of me?"

She paused for a moment, wishing that she was once again in stays and petticoats rather than blue silk pajamas, but she threw back her duvet and clamored out of her bed, running across the room and throwing open her door, ready to run down the hall and find him. But he was there, standing at her door, wearing a ridiculous contraption on his head that made his hair stand up at odd angles between the pads and wires. She felt a flare of lust that was not her own as he set eyes on her, before he snatched the headset off his skull and stood looking at her with wide eyes filled with need and just a little bit of terror. That flash of his need was amplified quickly by her own desire as she looked at him, the long lean lines of him in nothing but trousers and button down shirt, feet in only socks, his collar unbuttoned to show the elegant lines of his unscarred neck. She was filled with the sudden need to bite into that flesh, to mark him as hers.

The silence grew, and just as his eyes began to shutter again and the moment risked being lost forever, she reached forward to tuck her fingers into the waistband of his trousers and pulled him into her room. She closed the door and spun around, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck and pulling him forward, closing her eyes and pressing her lips against his. His mouth opened under hers, his tongue coming out to press against her lips and she opened to him, welcoming him. He kissed like he did everything, with no holds barred. Before she quite knew what had happened, she was spread out on her mattress with Nikola pressing against her, his hands everywhere, her top being pushed out of the way and her nails digging into his buttocks through the cloth of his trousers. He moved his kisses to her neck and downward, and she smiled into the darkness, thanking the universe for second chances.


End file.
